Ahead of Anniversary, Promoting All Things Kennedy

ON a recent morning, pedestrians on Columbus Circle walked by a newsstand stocked with boxes of nickel candy bars like Hi-Noon and Tofy-Nut; cartons of Kent and Tareyton cigarettes; and periodicals that carried photographs of President John F. Kennedy on their covers or front pages.

“I still can’t believe this,” a woman in 1960s garb declared loudly. “It’s shocking.” Nearby, a man, also in period clothing, proclaimed, “Extra, extra, Kennedy shot dead in Dallas, read all about it,” as other men and women in vintage outfits handed out replicas of the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post from Nov. 23, 1963.

The actors’ re-creation of a day from five decades ago was part of an extensive promotional campaign — by agencies that included Mullen, Mediahub, Pop2Life and the Entertainment Design Group — for “Killing Kennedy,” a special on the National Geographic Channel based on the best-selling book.

Some campaign elements raised eyebrows, among them a social media hashtag, “#KillingKennedy,” which the blogger Jeff Jarvis dismissed as “worst use of hashtag ever,” and a giveaway of 8,500 Kennedy half dollars in plastic cases bearing the hashtag and a description of the special as “a global television event.”

“Killing Kennedy” drew the largest viewership in the history of National Geographic Channel on its debut on Nov. 10. The channel has added a second rerun to its schedule, on Friday — the 50th anniversary of the assassination.

“We’ve taken great pains to make sure everything is done in a tasteful, nonexploitive way,” said Courteney Monroe, chief marketing officer at National Geographic Channels, owned by units of the National Geographic Society and 21st Century Fox.

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A publications unit of Time Inc. is offering a “bookazine” of People.

The special is “a really big swing for us,” she added. “It’s an exploration of a key event in history, so it’s very on-brand.”

Other shows inspired by the anniversary have also generated high ratings, allaying concerns among some television executives that the commemoration may be of interest only to older Americans who remember the Kennedy presidency. Those programs include “The Assassination of President Kennedy,” which CNN presented on Thursday as part of a new series, “The Sixties,” and “JFK,” a two-part special that PBS broadcast on Nov. 11 and 12 under the rubric of its “American Experience” series.

“When we decided to do a biography of J.F.K. that would air around the 50th anniversary of the assassination, we knew we wouldn’t be alone,” said Lauren Prestileo, series manager for “American Experience” at WGBH in Boston. “November seems to be all things Kennedy.”

Still, because Kennedy “holds a unique place in American memory,” she added, a decision was made to move forward with a show that would be more “about his life” than his death.

There are dozens of additional Kennedy programs on other networks, channels and online platforms, among them AXS TV, CBS, Discovery Channel, HBO, History, Military Channel, MSNBC, NBC, Reelz, TLC and Turner Classic Movies. Add to that flood a deluge of books as well as a tsunami of magazines and newspapers from publishers that are famous (Condé Nast, Time Inc.), familiar (Curtis Publishing, Kiplinger) and obscure (I-5 Publishing).

“It’s really remarkable how anniversaries trigger an interest in history,” said Stephen Koepp, editorial director at the Time Home Entertainment division of Time Inc., publishing five Kennedy books and “bookazines,” book-like magazines, under the Life, People and Time banners. (There are also articles in regular issues and on websites of Life, People and Time.)

“It was almost obligatory that Life do this 50th anniversary” despite its no longer being published regularly, said Richard B. Stolley, who was working for Life in Los Angeles when Kennedy was shot and flew to Dallas, where he subsequently paid $150,000 to Abraham Zapruder to obtain rights to Zapruder’s home movie of the assassination.

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Curtis Publishing is selling reprints of the Dec. 14, 1963, issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

Mr. Stolley, who recounts the tale in “Life Is on the Story,” which appears in the Life book and bookazine, remembered in a phone interview that when he arrived at Zapruder’s office “that next morning, there was no network television there” because the networks were “marshaling their resources for the funeral in Washington on Monday.”

“There was a newsreel there,” he added, in a tone of voice that underlined how long ago 1963 was in media terms in that newsreels were still being produced.

The Life book, “The Day Kennedy Died,” includes a reprint of the Nov. 29, 1963, issue of Life magazine — original price, 25 cents — which covered the assassination and paid tribute to the slain president. The issue carried ads for brands like the 1964 Plymouth, the Bell Telephone System, Wurlitzer organs and Pall Mall cigarettes.

The Curtis Publishing Company is reprinting the Dec. 14, 1963, issue of The Saturday Evening Post magazine, selling 10,000 copies at $11.99 each; the cover price of the original was 20 cents. That issue included ads for brands like Admiral TV sets, the 1964 Pontiac, Ronson electric toothbrushes and Viceroy cigarettes.

“We literally scanned a physical copy” of the issue in the magazine’s archives, said Steven Slon, editorial director and associate publisher of The Saturday Evening Post unit of Curtis. “We pulled the staples out and scanned it.”

What is next for the anniversary-industrial complex? “We’re on a rolling 50th anniversary of everything in the ’60s,” Mr. Koepp said, adding that plans are underway for “three books about the Beatles,” who first arrived in the United States on Feb. 7, 1964.

CBS announced last week it would broadcast a special, “The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles,” on Feb. 9 — the 50th anniversary of their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Ahead of Anniversary, Promoting All Things Kennedy. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe